Though I like the overall feel of the palette, this particular image feels washed out because everything is midtones, you're not using your (already not-that-dark) darkest colour at all. At the same time, the light parts of the grass and trees stand out too much, as do the dark shadows between the wooden boards.
That may not be a fault of the palette however, but just the fault of the recolouring. For example, having a smaller green ramp than before means if you use the same number of colours on the trees, you'll end up covering a larger value range, thence the high contrast.

Since your darks all hue-shift towards purple, I recommend hue-shifting your lights towards pale yellow rather than towards blue. Yellow contrasts nicely against blue, and would help avoid some of the washed-out look.

By everything being midtones, I just mean that you're not using dark and light colours much, you're sticking to the middle of the value scale for everything. It's perfectly fine to have only a few light and dark colours in your palette because humans don't distinguish the hues of those as well as midtones, but you should make sure you use those few light and dark colours to create contrast.

Although this is mostly a problem with your use of the palette rather than the palette itself, the palette does have some problems that make it harder to create contrast effectively. I think it's easiest to see if I put your colours along a value scale:


See how you have nothing at all on the left/dark part? Your darkest colour has 21% luminosity, meaning that you've eliminated 1/5th of the possible value range, greatly reducing your maximum possible contrast, which is why your mockup looks so washed out. It's perfectly fine to cut off a chunk of the darks if you don't want to use pure black, but I think 21% is a bit much. I tend to like lower-contrast palettes, but even then I try to have my darkest colour about 10% up the scale.

The next problem is that your colours don't cover the value scale evenly*. Your darks are all rather similar, and your lighter colours contrast a lot more from each other. You can sort of see this with how clumped up the colours are along the scale and how there's a gap between the two groups of midtones, but it's easier to see if you look at a specific ramp:

The darkest three colours are clustered together, they contrast little from one another. This isn't necessarily a problem, but since you're trying to get good coverage out of only a few colours, having three similar colours is a bit of a waste.
The lightest three colours, on the other hand, are very far apart, which means they contrast quite strongly. Perhaps even too much - it's hard to create highlights with these colours that aren't super-bright.
If your colours in each ramp cover the value scale more evenly, you'll have an easier time picking exactly the value you need.

Your purple-blue-cyan-iceblue ramp has what looks like more even spacing, but really it has similar problems:

The three darkest colours are clustered together, and the three brightest ones are spaced further apart. They're not spaced quite as far apart as the oranges and yellows, but they could afford to be spaced a little closer together if you space the darks further apart. Plus, you should probably have lower value contrast between some of these to account for the high saturation contrast.


* A note regarding even spacing on the value scale: Although I think more even spacing would improve this palette for the art style you seem to be aiming for, I want to clarify that it's not inherently bad to have uneven spacing. Clustering your colours around certain values can help to achieve certain looks. But, this is something that should be done with forethought. In addition, hue and saturation are additional sources of contrast, and the value contrast should be adjusted to work well with them, which means that the value distances should generally not be perfectly even.

The value chart is just a way to spot potential problems. Use it as a guide to nudge your colours around, not as a goal in itself.

Increasing saturation does not increase the value; hue, value, and saturation are independent building blocks of colour. Increasing the difference in saturation between two colours increases the contrast between those two colours. Adjust the saturation as you see fit to give the look you want.

Still messing about with colours, this is the current palette in action:



Also here:



Also did a quick 1-2 hour "doodle" larger sprite, probably could be more refined:



Anatomy is still an issue, but i'm slowly getting there. I'm having issues shading and defining the arms and lower legs, i think i'll need to make them bigger next time i do another large attempt

I prefer number 3, but it also very much depends on the background... As for the shading, it's not working for me, it makes it feel rounded in the vertical axis, almost like a butt plug!

But most of all, I appreciate this thread is still running! For over 6 years now! This thread is an icon!

I did like the colored backgrounds, they made it much easier to distinguish the tiles!